Brints Diner to reopen yet again: ‘Honestly, we’re in it for the long haul’

It’s hard to think of a restaurant that’s had more openings and closings and new owners in the last decade or so than Brints Diner, but the restaurant’s new operators say they’re here to stay.

“Honestly, we’re in it for the long haul,” says longtime Wichita chef Jeremiah Harvey, who is reopening Brints with Winwood Bowman.

The restaurant, which has been in a Valentine diner near the northeast corner of Lincoln and Oliver for more than half a century, has been closed for several months and will reopen in April.

The two had previous plans to reopen it, but then Harvey went to work for All Things Barbecue as retail experience manager and chef.

Bowman kept trying to convince him they should still reopen Brints, and finally Harvey agreed.

“He finally twisted my arm enough.”

Harvey has been a chef at various places in Wichita, but the most cooking he’ll do at Brints is prep work after he gets off work at his day job.

Bowman will run the business daily from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

“We’re truly going to do everything from scratch,” Harvey says.

That includes everything from breakfast biscuits to hamburger buns at lunch.

Brints will have typical breakfast fare.

“It’ll be good old Brints Diner,” Harvey says.

There also will be upscale burgers for lunch and a few perhaps unexpected offerings.

“Winwood has a couple of things up his sleeve that he’s going to do for vegans,” Harvey says of dishes such as a root veggie mash.

Harvey also will use Brints as the drop-off and pick-up site for his Chef Sharp knife-sharpening business.

He says the building’s owners are working with him and Winwood and being generous on rent deals to help make the restaurant happen for the long term.

“We’ve really just struck up a deal,” Harvey says. “We’re going to make it happen.”

This story was originally published February 27, 2019 at 5:00 AM.